a dog can never have too many toys!

The floatable toy I made for Gibbs, using an empty dairy cream bottle and crocheting in the round with some rather gawdy-coloured yarn. You’ve already seen photos of the incredible floating toy in action, thus

Well I decided it would be a good idea to make a few more, in case of loss or damage. For the moment it’s holding up very well. Okay, it’s now a bit flattened, but Gibbs’ teeth haven’t made holes in the plastic yet, nor has he ripped the crochet cover to pieces. He’s a good boy – he knows it’s a “fetch” toy, not to be confused with a “chew” toy.

Still, I crocheted up two more, just so we have a couple of back-up toys in the future. And here they are, alongside the flattened first toy (on the right). I’ve kept the idea of long chains which serve two purposes: 1) to knot together and therefore close the cover, which can be removed if the bottle is ever pierced. 2) when holding the toy by the chains, it’s easier to fling it quite far out into the lake.

These were made to fit around 340ml drinkable yoghurt bottles, which have something of a waist-line. They might be a better shape for Gibbs. The new ones look very bright compared to the first one. This isn’t because yarn colour has faded, but rather because the colour of the second ball had less yellow than the first one (despite being the same dye number). Gibbs won’t care. He sat beside me while I was making them, knowing full well I was making something for him.

And, still on the subject of crochet . . . a photo to show my growing collection of crochet books.

There are a total of six in the series. I started out buying the first (with the monkey) and pre-ordered number 6 which came out in May this year. Then in June and July, I treated myself to numbers 2 and 3. Buying one book a month is fairly reasonable, and by this autumn I will have the complete set to drool over.

I’ll do another post in a few days time to show you a couple of the inside pages, perhaps to make you drool too.

That hedge hog is beyond adorable! On a small world note, my neighbor is going to Lyon today to visit her new grand baby. Never occurred to me I would have a neighbor going to France! Are you far away from Lyon? 😄

Gibbs is such a good boy for not ripping his toys apart! I made a few of these for my naughty pups and they were able to destroy them within a few hours. 😦 They seemed to think it was the perfect toy to play tug-of-war with. I made two of them but of course they always think that whatever the other one has is more interesting than the one that they have. 😀

Giibs does have some toys which he destroys but they’re the shop-bought ones made with a sort of rope, tied into knots. He also has one for “teething” made of really solid rubber, with brushes and animal hide Inside. He does seem to make the difference between “fetch” toys and “teething” toys though. In his toy box, he also has 2 soft bears, one soft “Alfie” toy and a long soft toy with a squeaker Inside. With those, he just likes to carry them about and take them to bed lol.